The Kansas mansion
Why this seat
Kansas elects Democratic governors when the other party nominates badly. Rating this lean is a bet on an opponent's mistake, and the desk labels it as such rather than dressing it as a read on the state.
State of the field
Open with Kelly termed out; both primaries live.
The test
Kansas goes with its baseline unless the Republican primary produces the kind of nominee that has twice handed this office away.
The mansion model runs separately from the Senate one. It carries less of the presidential result into the race — 0.45 of a point per point, against 0.78 on the Senate board — and allows a wider miss per seat, because a governor's race turns on a personal vote a national baseline cannot see. Both numbers stand: the simulated one and the one the desk wrote first.
| Held now | Democratic |
| On the ballot | Open (Kelly termed out) |
| 2024 presidential margin | −16.1 |
| Modelled lean · 1σ | −3.1 · ±9.5 |
| Desk rating | 65% Republican |
| Band meaning | A real advantage. About a third of them will flip anyway. |
Model call · governors-2026.1
38%
Democratic nominee wins
Kansas elects Democratic governors when Republicans nominate badly. That is a bet on the other side's mistake, not on the state.
Nothing written on this page feeds that number. The method.
No candidate ledger is published for this seat. A ledger requires a completed first-party source pass — every candidate's own published policy pages, read on the same day, under identical headings and an identical word budget. Until that pass is done, printing a partial board would rate the campaigns that publish against the ones that have not, which is the asymmetry the Standard exists to prevent.
See a finished ledger — GeorgiaThe Georgia room
North Carolina · Senate · Class 2The North Carolina room
Maine · Senate · Class 2The Maine room